A Tolkien English Glossary is a reference book listing and explaning rare and archaic word from J.R.R. Tolkien's The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings. The material of the book is also published as a free web resource (see External links below).

Editorial review

The book contains over 1100 words and is intended to be a quick reference guide for the reader of The Hobbit & The Lord of the Rings, where old, uncommon and archaic words can be quickly looked up and their meaning made clear.

Draught for example occurs 35 times in the text with at least 5 different meanings. It means current of air in one sentence, drinking, or a drink or potion in another, one who is drafted into service in another, to draw or to pull in another and finally the depth a vessel sinks in the water. One needs to know all of the meanings in order to fully understand the text.

The words in the first section of each book are arranged in order of appearance in the books. In the last section, the words are arranged alphabetically for ease of finding a particular word without regard to where it is used.

Also included is the sentence where the word is used to provide the reader with the contextual setting of the word in the sentence it is used in as an aid to understand the meaning.